


The Invention of Instantaneous Interstellar Travel

by boombangbing



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Stockholm Syndrome, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2018-04-01 03:36:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4004356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boombangbing/pseuds/boombangbing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b>AOU spoilers.</b> Bruce goes to Jane with a request that only she can help with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Invention of Instantaneous Interstellar Travel

It's a long walk back from work, down a main road and past a sparse collection of bleak buildings, almost no one else on the sidewalk with her. There are a couple of run down chalets, but most of the buildings are concrete and grey and if it weren't for the mountains in the distance, she'd think she was on a council estate in London. But the sky is blue, there's a warm breeze blowing over her, and she's gone eighteen hours without sleep, so the scenery is a welcome change.

She drops in at a pizzeria to pick up a medium pepperoni and continues on her way, the smell of the pizza making her stomach growl. It's just past six thirty and the sun is slowly starting to set, throwing an orange haze over everything. There are a couple of people walking behind her who turn off before she reaches her housing complex, and she cuts across a central reserve and starts walking towards her building. She's maybe twenty feet from it before she feels a presence behind her. She glances over her shoulder, covering the movement with a flick of her hair, and sees a guy – she thinks it's a guy – in a hoodie, watching the ground as he walks. She's seen enough miserable Nordic crime dramas in the last few months to know where this is going.

Carefully, she collects up her phone and keys and closes her fingers around them. She tries her best to keep her pace steady, fighting the urge to run, and curses the awkwardly shaped pizza box that she's holding to her chest with one hand.

She makes it across the quad to her building, the hooded man still following at a distance, and fumbles to unlock her phone. She slots the pizza box underneath her arm and pulls out her keys to unlock the outer door. The footsteps behind her pick up speed.

“I have a taser,” she calls out, her heart pounding against her chest, wishing that she really did. Next time she'll listen to Darcy. The footsteps keep coming, though slower, and she wonders if he even speaks English. “I'm going to call the cops. La police! Polizei!” she shouts, and struggles with her shaking fingers to jam the key in the lock.

“Please don't,” the man says softly. American.

She freezes her a moment, then slowly over her shoulder. His hood is still up, obscuring his face enough that she can only make out a straggly beard. He's holding his hands to his chest, sleeves covering them completely.

“Why are you following me?” she says into the silence that surrounds them.

“I'm sorry,” he murmurs, and takes another step forward.

“Don't,” she says sharply, pressing her back against the door, her fingers poised to call the police. Why isn't she dialing already?

“Sorry,” he repeats, and stills. He pulls his hood a bit, so that his nose and eyes are visible.

She stares at him for a long moment, looking over his scrubby face before gasping slightly. “Dr Banner?” He's been gone for months, almost a year.

He swallows visibly and nods. 

“You really scared me,” she says.

He flinches like she's slapped him and presses his lips together for a moment. “I'm sorry,” he says again.

“What are you...” He's a fugitive, wanted by South African authorities, the United Nations, and Interpol. She's personally met him twice, both times very briefly. “Why are you here? What do you want?”

He pulls his hood back over his face and keeps fidgeting his hands. “I need... help, Dr Foster.”

“My help?”

He nods.

She looks him over; he looks dirty, and anxious, and _exhausted_. She purses her lips and looks around. There's a couple walking across the quad towards another building. She takes a breath.

“Come in,” she says.

He looks up quickly, the surprise apparent in his shaded eyes. “I didn't want-- I was just-- I--”

“Come in,” she repeats and unlocks the door. She pulls it open and waits for him to shuffle closer and then finally through the door and into the lobby. She follows him in and closes the door, then walks over to the elevator and presses the button.

Dr Banner stands a few feet away as they wait for the elevator to reach the ground floor, then hesitantly walks forward when the door slides open. She gets in and holds the door until he shuffles in, then hits the button for the tenth floor. They ride up in silence, Dr Banner keeping his eyes fixed on the ground. When the doors open again, she walks out, expecting him to follow, and heads to her door. He does, albeit slowly, as if he's fighting against some invisible force that's holding him back. She leaves the door open for him.

Her apartment is a mess; a cramped, soulless mess. She sighs and pushes a pair a discarded trainers aside with her foot. The door closes, and she looks back to find Dr Banner almost hunched over as if she won't be able to see him there.

“Sorry about the place. Culver's paying, so...”

“It's fine,” he says, his voice cracking and rough sounding all of a sudden. “It's better than...” She waits a couple of seconds to let him finish his thought, but he lets it hang.

“Are you hungry?” she says, looking back at him.

His brow furrows and he looks at her, then back at the floor. “I... don't know,” he murmurs.

How can he not know? “Well, I'm going to leave the box in the kitchen, so if you want some...”

“Thanks...”

She frowns. “Do you want to use my bathroom?”

He looks at her again, quickly, then glances around the small hallway. “Um, yeah, thanks.”

“It's through there,” she says, pointing behind him. “I'll be in the kitchen.”

She leaves without looking back at him and takes the couple of steps to the kitchen. She transfers some of the clutter from the kitchen table on to one of the chairs and puts the pizza box down on it, then takes out her phone again and looks at it. She has the Avengers on speed dial, right there at the top of her phone book. He should be with them, not here in her tiny one bed apartment.

She hears the water running and puts the phone aside. A fugitive in her apartment. Great.

She opens up the pizza box to find all the pepperoni gathered at one end. “Great,” she mutters, and moves to the sink to wash her hands before gathering up the pieces and returning them to their rightful places. She hears Dr Banner's padding footsteps and looks around the kitchen door to find him fidgeting in the living room. She grabs a couple of plates and puts a slice of pizza on each before joining him.

“This is for you,” she says, holding the plate out to her.

“Oh,” he says, fumbling to take it from her. “I'm, I'm okay...”

She shrugs. “If you get hungry,” she says and moves to the couch to sit down. He stays standing, clutching the plate. “You can sit,” she says, gesturing to the other end of the futon. He seems to debate with himself for a moment before sitting down at the furthest edge. 

“So, why are you here?”

“Um,” he murmurs. “I need... help.”

“Yeah, you said.” Clearly he needs help, but she doesn't think he means the kind she's thinking.

He glances up at her and then down at his lap. “I need to go... away. Really far away.”

“Okay...”

“You can... open wormholes,” he mutters.

She blinks. “You want to run away... to space?”

“I just need to be...” He shakes his head slowly. “A-away. From everyone.”

“So, why didn't you go to Thor with this? He can take you there easier than I can.” She wonders if he knows that she's never actually managed to get the wormhole stable.

“He'll tell the rest of them,” Dr Banner says quietly.

“And you think I won't?”

He looks up at her, keeping his head still and lifting only his eyes, which are bloodshot and seem slightly yellow. He looks haunted. Hunted. He opens and closes his mouth for a moment, then swallows. “I don't know.”

“What about Widow?”

He squeezes his eyes shut. “I don't know,” he whispers.

“All right,” she says. “I guess I'll think about it.”

He barely responds, seemingly lost inside his head. She clears her throat and starts picking at her pizza. Despite the obvious insanity of his plan, she can't help but start thinking about how she could get the wormhole open and stable. Since starting her work on the Convergance, the wormhole has been put on hold, but with the Large Hadron Collider at her disposal, she might be able to do it. But how would she get Dr Banner _in_ to CERN?

And why is she even considering this?

Dr Banner takes a breath and opens his eyes. “I'm sorry that I scared you,” he says in an almost mechanical voice.

“It's okay,” she says, “but you should eat.”

He looks down and blinks at the plate like he'd forgotten it was there, then nods and picks up the slice He eats it slowly, chewing each bite laboriously before swallowing it down hard, as if his throat can't accommodate it. She gets up and fetches a glass of water for him, placing it on the floor next to his feet. He doesn't seem to register the movement and she settles back down on the couch to eat her own slice. She bought a whole pizza but she's lost her appetite now and feels full by the time she finishes the crust.

Dr Banner finishes too, and curls his hands into his chest again.

“Do you want any more?”

He shakes his head.

“There's a glass of water on the floor, if you're thirsty.”

He blinks at her, then looks down at the floor and leans down to pick it up. He rolls the glass between his hands for a moment, then starts drinking, draining it all within a minute. He clears his throat and puts the glass back down. “Sorry,” he murmurs.

“Don't worry,” she says. “Do you want to, I don't know, have a shower or something?”

“Um...” He looks up at her, seeming slightly less distant. “Maybe that would be a good idea, yeah...”

“Well, there are extra towels in the plastic drawers and you can use the soap and stuff. Do you have a change of clothes?”

“Yeah,” he says, gesturing to his bag.

“Okay, well... take as long as you want...”

“Okay,” he says, and pushes himself up. He stumbles a little and she leans forward.

“Hey, are you okay?”

He smiles quickly, nothing reaching his eyes. “I'm fine. I'll, uh, thanks.” He picks up his bag and leaves the room. 

Jane picks up the plates and goes back to the kitchen. Her phone is still on the counter and once she's deposited the plates in the sink, she picks it up and looks at it. She should _really_ call someone, like really really. She shakes her head and puts the phone in her pocket.

She goes to her bedroom, passing by the bathroom door on her way. It's closed and the shower is running, faint noises underneath the gush that she does her best not to focus on. She opens up her closet, gets out a blanket and her spare pillow, and brings them back to the living room. Then she picks up her laptop and opens her Eisenstein-Rosen Bridge folder.

Dr Banner doesn't come back out of the bathroom for half an hour, and her windows start to steam up even with the bathroom door closed. When he slopes back out, his face is red, but maybe that's from the hot water. He looks beyond exhausted, his under eyes hollow and dark.

“I should go,” he says roughly. “I shouldn't have... I'm sorry.”

“Dr Banner,” she says. He stares back at her. “You're tired, right? And you look slightly jaundiced. Why don't you just stay for the night?”

He blinks a couple of times, looking completely lost in her tiny living room.

“Come on,” she says softly. “I have blankets.”

He nods, though he looks right through her, and comes over to the couch again. She gets up and hands him the blanket, which he takes and holds to his chest for moment. “Thank you,” he murmurs.

“No problem,” she says and picks up her laptop. “I, uh, I'm pretty tired too, so I'm going to wash up and go to bed, but if you need anything, just knock, it's fine.”

He nods. “Thank you,” he repeats. “I'm sorry for...”

“You don't have to apologise again, Dr Banner.”

“Bruce,” he murmurs.

“Bruce,” she repeats, and holds out her hand. “I'm Jane.”

He shakes her hand, his grip weak. “Thank you, Jane.”

“Sleep well,” she says, and leaves the room.

-

She doesn't sleep well, though. Bruce is utterly silent, but the knowledge that he's there keeps her up, tossing and turning until she gets sweaty and has to throw the covers off. She dozes off for a while in the early hours of the morning, but gives up on getting any more sleep by five and quietly gets out of bed. She opens her door softly and peers across the hallway into the living room. Bruce is standing up, looking out the window. She pulls her robe on and goes in.

“Morning,” she says, and Bruce starts, his shoulders going tense.

He turns and looks at her; he looks marginally less exhausted but still nowhere near healthy. “Did I wake you up?”

“No, I just went to sleep early, that's all.” She nods to the windows. “I still think it's crazy that I can look out my window and see France.”

“Yeah, it's cool,” he says, and looks back out the window.

She bites her lip. “I'm going to make some coffee, do you want any?”

“No, thanks,” he mutters.

She nods to the back of his head and goes into the kitchen to start boiling the water for instant. Darcy is aghast at her drinking the stuff, but Jane is no aficionado, she just drinks it to stay awake. 

The pizza box is still on the kitchen table, and she goes over to it – cold pizza for breakfast was a tradition in college – and flips it open. There are two slices left. She glances up at the kitchen door, where she can see Bruce still standing at the window, and smiles. She picks up one of the slices and returns to the counter to make her coffee. When she comes back to the living room, Bruce looks slightly embarrassed as his gaze falls on the food, but neither of them say anything.

“How are you feeling?”

“I'm fine,” he says.

Sure he is. She sips her coffee and comes over to the window. “That's Saint-Genis-Pouilly,” she says, butchering the pronunciation. She never could get to grips with French at school. “I've been a couple of times, it's nice there. Lots of green and fields. Being here is like being in _The Sound of Music_. Not that I ever really liked that movie, it was too long and I didn't have the attention span for it...” She's babbling. She clears her throat. “Look, I'll try, okay? But I've never managed to open up a stable wormhole, so I don't know how long it'll take.”

He looks at her out of the corner of his eye. “You won't call the Avengers?”

“No. And you can stay here, keep out of sight. As you can probably tell the place is pretty quiet most of the time, and I don't get many visitors...”

“Why are you helping me?”

She shrugs. “You wanted me to, right?”

“Yeah, but... that doesn't mean you should.”

“Well,” she says, and smiles. “I don't make great decisions.”

It's a joke, but Bruce just stares back at her for a moment, then mutters, “me either.”

She sighs and almost pats him on the shoulder, but thinks better of it. “I'm gonna have a shower.”

It's not even six by the time she washes up and gets dressed, and she comes back into the living room and switches on the TV. Bruce is loitering in the kitchen and she lets him, focusing on the subtitles on the screen. She really needs to bone up on her French. 

The awkward tension in the apartment is so bad that she starts getting ready to leave by six thirty. Bruce sits back down on the couch and curls his hands into his lap. She grabs a scrap of paper and scribbles her number on it.

“This is my cell if you need to call me,” she says. Bruce blinks up at her for a moment before taking the piece of paper. “Do you have a phone?”

He shakes his head.

“Well, I've got a landline, you can use that,” she says, and gestures to the bulky white phone.

“Your lines are probably bugged,” Bruce murmurs.

“Oh,” she says. “Well... I guess I'll just see you later, then.”

“Yeah,” he mutters. “Thanks.”

She shares her lab with two post-doctoral students, Tomas and Amanda, from the Czech Republic and Canada respectively. They're good lab partners; they don't talk very much, she likes that. Darcy's been away having fun in Amsterdam with Ian, taking all the conversation with her.

“How was your evening, Dr Foster?” Tomas asks, glancing up from his computer as she passes.

“It was fine,” she says. “Uh, uneventful.”

“Ah, me too,” Tomas says, and looks back at his computer.

She spends all day toiling over her old Einstein-Rosen bridge research, quickly coming to the conclusion that it could _work_ ; with the LHC and what she's learnt about the Convergance, she could do it, bring worlds together. 

But should she? Has any scientist ever asked themselves that question before?

She works until seven, til her eyes burn with tiredness. She takes the bus back home and wonders the whole way back if Bruce is still going to be there. It would be better if he'd gone, really. It would be much better, much less like an accessory to the crime for her, but when she lets herself in, he's still there, curled up on her couch.

“Hey,” she says.

He starts and sits up, peering at her over the back of the couch.

“Sorry, did I wake you up?”

“'sfine,” he says softly.

“I'm going to make myself some pasta, do you want some?”

He shakes his head. “I'm not hungry.”

“All right,” she says, and goes to the kitchen. She boils a couple of handfuls of pasta and leaves half of it in the pan, just in case, then eats her portion leaning against the counter and excuses herself to bed soon after.

The second night, she sleeps, and wakes up the next morning to a washed and dried pan.

-

They pass a week in this awkward kind of twilight, barely speaking. Bruce has two sets of clothes, which he wears day and night, and he rarely eats when she's present. He keeps the beard, though he trims it a little. That doesn't stop him from looking tired and unkempt. It's like he's wasting away in front of her. 

On Saturday, she walks over to the local shopping centre, which is only ten minutes away from her building, and wanders around for a while before she locates a men's clothes store. She doesn't know what size Bruce is, but she'd guess a medium so she picks up a couple of size fifty two t-shirts, a couple of shirts, a sweater, a new hoodie, and two pairs of pyjamas. Pant are harder, though; men's sizes make as much sense to her as women's sizes do. She picks up a couple of pairs that look about right and grabs a belt just to be safe.

The shopping centre is kind of miserable, small and deserted, and once she's done with the clothes there isn't much else to see. She passes by a chocolate shop on the way out, though, and buys an obscene amount of chocolate.

The TV is playing softly when she gets back in. She closes the door behind her and toes her shoes off.

“Bruce?” 

He's sitting, staring at the TV, unmoving.

She sighs and comes around to the front of the couch. Bruce looks up at her slowly. She empties the bag of clothes on the couch. “Wear those,” she says, and drops the box of chocolates on his lap, “and eat this.”

“What?”

“I bought you clothes and chocolate,” she says, “I mean, not all the chocolate's for you.”

“Why?”

She purses her lips. “Because you needed it. All right? I didn't know what size to get so I guessed. Try them on and see.”

He collects up the pile of clothes carefully and nods. “Okay.” He shuffles off and she opens up the box of chocolates and starts picking through it. He returns five minutes later with jeans and a sweater on.

“How do they fit?” she asks.

“Yeah,” he says, “they're... thank you. They're good.”

“You don't have to thank me.” She holds out the box and he slowly takes one and starts eating.

“Good?” she says.

“Yeah,” he says, putting one hand over his mouth as he chews.

“The Swiss know their chocolate,” she says, and puts the box down next to her on the couch. “I'm going to watch a weird dubbed movie, you want to join me?”

“Uh...” He looks at the TV, then back at her. She nudges the box towards him. “Okay...”

-

On Monday, she figures out how to open up a stable wormhole.

When she comes home, Bruce says haltingly, “Did you have a good-- how was work?” like he's forgotten how to ask the question.

“Yeah, it was okay. I...” Finished the bridge, it's ready to go, you can stop sleeping on my futon. “Worked on the bridge. It's... throwing up a lot more problems than I expected.”

Bruce nods. “Okay.”

“Do you want something to eat?”

He starts shaking his head, then stops. “Okay,” he says softly.

-

On Wednesday she buys him socks and underwear and he goes faintly pink and takes them from her with a muttered, 'thanks'.

-

“Give me your clothes,” Jane says on Friday.

“Huh?” Bruce says, looking up from a book he's reading.

“I need to do the washing now, I've got my slot.”

Bruce blinks. “Slot?”

“There are slots to use the washing machines,” she says. “Mine is Friday, five to seven.”

“Um... oh, you don't need to do my washing...”

She shrugs. “It costs the same with or without your stuff, so...”

“Oh, uh...” He gets up and gathers up his small pile of clothes. She holds out her laundry basket and he drops them in. “Thanks.”

“No problem. I'll be back up in a bit.”

She rides the elevator down and goes into the basement laundry room. There's one other person in there, an old lady sorting through her drying. Her name's Flurina, Jane thinks, they've talked a couple of times since Flurina has the slot before her.

“Hi,” Jane says, and puts down her basket to measure out the detergent.

“Hello,” Flurina says. Her English is heavily accented, but pretty good. “How are you?”

“I'm good,” Jane says distantly. She pours the detergent in and starts loading up the machine.

“Ah...” Flurina murmurs, and nods to the clothes in Jane's hands. “You have a man friend.”

Jane looks up. “Sorry?”

Flurina points at the boxers in Jane's hand. “A man friend,” she says, and winks.

“Oh no, they're... mine,” she says, and drops them in the machine.

“Of course,” Flurina says, and smiles. She collects up her drying and nods to Jane. “Have a good evening.”

Jane grimaces a little. “Yeah, you too...”

-

She spends the third week combing over her Einstein-Rosen bridge research, looking for any reason why it won't work, any way she could retroactively not be lying. But her work is solid; she is, in fact, _too good_. There's no way around it – she's just straight up lying to him.

When she comes home at the end of the week, she resolves to tell him. It's his life to mess up, and it's not like she even has any stake in it. She barely knows him.

She psyches herself up the whole trip back from work, practising it in her head. _Hey, guess what? I had a huge breakthrough today, you'll be spacebound in a couple of days!_ Seems easy enough.

She lets herself in and finds the room empty. Has he...? No, he wouldn't...

“Jane?” Bruce calls.

She looks towards the kitchen door and sees him standing there, his shoulders hunched slightly.

“Hey,” she says.

He smiles briefly. “I made dinner, if you're hungry?”

“You did?”

He shrugs. “Just pasta and some of the, uh, the stuff you had in the fridge.”

She smiles. “That sounds great, let me just wash up.”

They sit on the couch and eat in silence. The pasta is good, he actually made it appetising instead of just convenient. The yellow pallor to his skin and his eyes have gone away, but he looks terribly pale now. He hasn't been outside in three weeks, she thinks, and tells herself to buy vitamin D supplements. Not that he'll need them _once she's told him the truth_.

“Can I ask you something?” she says.

He looks up from his plate. “What?”

“Why do you want to leave so bad? The Avengers must be able to deal with your... warrants. And why do you need to go so far?”

He blinks three times before answering. “I... They're just better off without me.”

“Even Widow?”

“Especially her,” he mutters.

“You really think that?”

He nods slowly and returns to the pasta. She doesn't believe him.

“Do you want ice cream for dessert?” she asks.

-

She comes out of her bedroom the next morning and peers over the back of the couch. He's lying on his side, facing away from her, but she's pretty sure he's awake. She goes into the kitchen and pours herself a bowl of cereal, then comes back to the front of the couch.

“Scoot,” she says.

He turns his head slightly, looking up at her. “Sorry?” he says, blinking rapidly.

She waves her free hand. “Scoot up, I want to watch TV.”

“Oh,” he murmurs, and starts pulling himself up. “Sorry.” He pulls his legs up onto the couch and piles the blanket on his lap.

She smiles and sits down, leaving the middle seat empty, and turns on the TV. She flicks through the channels for a minute, skipping over news and weather reports, and settles on _Babar_.

“This okay?” she asks.

Bruce shrugs. “Sure.”

They watch in silence for a few minutes, Jane sloppily eating her cereal, before Bruce glances over at her. “Uh. Do you understand any of this?”

She back at him. “A little. For instance, I know that that elephant is called Babar.”

Bruce almost smiles before his gaze drifts back to the TV.

“French wasn't my strong point at school,” she continues. “What about you, do you speak any other languages?”

“I barely speak English,” he says, and she laughs. He actually smiles this time, if only briefly. “I speak some Portuguese.”

“Yeah? Let's hear some.”

“Meu nome é Bruce,” he says.

“Nice to meet you, Bruce,” she says. “Why Portuguese?”

“I used to live in Brazil.”

“Oh yeah?” She's definitely going to pretend that she already knew that they spoke Portuguese in Brazil. “That must have been cool, what was it like?”

He shrugs, looking back at the TV. “Yeah, it was... nice.”

She nods to herself. Clearly this is one of the many subjects that he doesn't like to talk about. She looks back at the TV as well for a couple of minutes, but now she wants to talk and she's terrible at clamping down on her babbling once it gets going.

“What was your favourite cartoon as a kid?”

He turns his head back to her. “I didn't...” He frowns for a moment. “I wasn't allowed to watch cartoons as a kid.”

“What, at all? What about at friends' houses?”

“I didn't have any friends.” 

She clears her throat. “Oh, uh, okay.”

The corner of his mouth tips up. “What about you?”

“I had a couple of friends,” she says, then feels her cheeks start to warm when his eyebrows go up a little. “Oh, you meant...? Yeah, uh... my favourite was _The Jetsons_. You know, because of the whole living in...” Oh. “Space,” she finishes, and clears her throat again.

“I liked _Power Rangers_ when I was in grad school,” he offers.

“That's not a cartoon, though.”

He blinks. “Yeah...”

She smiles widely. “It's okay, I liked them too.”

He shifts his arms, pulling the blankets closer to his chest. “Is, um, is Thor going to come visit you here?”

“Thor?” she repeats. Bruce nods, pulling the corner of his bottom lip into his mouth slightly to chew on it. “No, he won't be. I guess you don't know, but we broke up. Well. He broke up with me.”

“He broke up with you? Why?”

She lifts her shoulders. “Apocalypse something something, keeping me safe something something. I don't know.” She could have fought it, but honestly? Third time's the charm, even for her.

“I'm sorry,” Bruce says, and he does look sorry, the space between his eyebrows wrinkled up in concern.

“It's fine,” she says. “It's just something that happened. It was probably inevitable.”

“Still...” Bruce murmurs.

She shrugs and picks up her empty cereal bowl. “I'm going to get some chocolate, you want some?”

-

Darcy calls Jane while she's at work, fretting and not focusing on her work at all. Jane picks up the call and steps out into the hallway to talk.

“Hey, Jane!” Darcy says. “How's things at CERN?”

“Uneventful,” Jane says.

“Really? It felt like there was always some shit going on there when I was there.”

“No, it's been quiet. Anyway, how's Amsterdam.”

“Oh man, it's amazing. There's so much pot. The pot, Jane!”

“There are some castles to look at too,” Jane says.

“Uh huh, sure there are. But anyway, I'll be coming back to beautiful Meyrin soon, we haven't decided exactly when yet.”

“There's no hurry,” Jane says quickly.

“I am not needed?” Darcy says with mock offence in her tone.

“No, no, I just mean... if you and Ian are having fun being all, uh, in love, then don't cut it short on my account.”

Darcy is quiet for a beat before pitching her voice low. “How are you doing with everything?”

Jane sighs. “I'm fine.”

“Oh yeah, you sound fine.”

“I'm just working hard, not doing much else...” Jane says, and pinches the bridge of her nose. “There's no reason for you to stop having fun for that.”

Darcy hums for a second. “Okay,” she allows, “I'll play it by ear, but you've gotta call me if you get all sad again.”

Jane smiles to herself; as good and caring a friend as Darcy is, she still has a strong self interest that Jane can rely on coming through eventually, much like Jane herself. Maybe that's why they like each other.”

“Promise,” Jane says.

-

At the end of the week, she buys a big bag of oranges and drops one in Bruce's lap before taking the rest to the kitchen.

“I don't want you to get scurvy,” she says.

“I probably... won't get scurvy,” she hears him say quietly.

“I just want to be sure,” she calls back. 

Despite his belief that he won't get scurvy, he eats an orange everyday, and she adds them to her regular shopping list. They're closing in on his fifth week hiding the apartment, and he no longer asks her about her progress. Sometimes she makes little throwaway comments about how hard she's working at it, and he nods and doesn't ask.

-

The temperature takes a sharp dive in mid October and she keeps the heating on a lot, despite the cost. Culver's covering the rent but drew the line at bills. She's not _that_ important.

Even with the heating on, she still finds Bruce shivering on the couch at night, not to mention cracking his back most mornings. Short of buying a new couch, what can she do?

Short of telling him _the truth_ , what can she do?

Tomas has a massive project he needs to get done and somehow she finds herself volunteered for it. It looks like it's going to be an all-nighter and it'll be the first time she's left Bruce alone for that long.

“Hey,” she says as she shovels things into her bag. Bruce is reading another of her books. “I'm probably going to be gone all night, so if you... want to take the bed, you can.”

His eyebrows jump up. “Um. Uh, it's okay, I can't take your bed...”

“I mean, it's not really my bed,” Jane says, willing herself not to blush. “The place came furnished. It's just that I know that the futon isn't very comfortable, but yeah... Whatever you want...”

“Okay, thanks, that's really nice of you,” he says softly.

“Yeah, well, I'm really nice,” she says.

A little too nice, as it happens. Tomas's project is an absolute monster and for once her attention is completely diverted from her issues at home. She doesn't call it quits until four am and Tomas drives her home with the intention of going right back afterwards.

“Thank you for all your help,” he says as he pulls up near her building, “I hope I didn't keep you from anything.”

“Keep me...?” The spike of anxiety in her gut is dulled by her tiredness. “No, I don't... have anything going on.”

“Oh, you've just been working shorter hours recently,” Tomas says, “I thought you might be occupied somehow.”

“Nope, not occupied at all,” she says quickly, a little too high-pitched. She opens the car door and smiles at him. “Thanks for the ride, I'll see you in a couple of days, okay?”

Tomas nods. “Yes, of course.”

Jane hops out of the car. “Bye!”

Man, she is _so_ smooth. She hurries across the quad to her building and lets herself in. It's more silent than normal, which only makes her brain drift more on the elevator ride up. There was a time when twenty four hours without sleep was nothing to her.

She lets herself into the apartment and closes the door carefully behind her, then takes off her shoes and goes into her bedroom. Her hand is reaching for the light switch when her eyes adjust to the dark just enough to make out a dark lump on her bed. She drops her hand and creeps around to the other side of the bed and leans down; it's definitely Bruce, not some sleepy home invader. He's right up to the edge of the bed, on top of the covers with the blanket over him. She never thought he'd take her up on the offer. 

Now what's she supposed to do? She doesn't want to kick him out of bed, but she's definitely not sleeping on that futon.

Well, fuck it, they're both adults. She strips down to her underwear and quietly opens her closet to retrieve some pyjamas. If Bruce wakes up now, he's going to get an eyeful. She pauses her work pawing through her piles of clothes by feel and thinks about it. It wouldn't be the end of the world...

She pulls out a top and pants and tugs them on, then closes the closet door and pulls back her covers just enough to slide in without tugging on them where Bruce is lying. She lies back on the mattress carefully, trying her best not to bounce it. Bruce still shifts, stretching his legs out further, but stays asleep. She's asleep as soon as her head hits the pillow.

-

The other side of the bed is empty when she wakes up. That's probably not much of a surprise. She pulls herself up and looks over at the clock: one pm. Wow, she was tired. She stretches her arms over her head, then gets up and snags her robe from the back of the door. She comes out of the room and looks into the living room.

“Bruce?” Jane calls. 

He walks out of the kitchen and looks over at her. “Hi...”

“Hey,” she says, and leans against the door frame.

“Uh...” he murmurs. “Um, I'm sorry about... last night.”

“Don't be sorry, I said you could take the bed. I should have just slept on the couch.”

“No, I shouldn't have...” He shrugs. “I shouldn't have.”

“It's really fine,” she says. “I'm going have a shower, unless you want one?”

He crosses his arms over his chest. “No, I already had one. I've been... awake for a while.”

She smiles. “Oh yeah, I don't usually sleep this late. I guess I'm just getting old.”

“Um.” Bruce lifts a hand to rub at his eyebrow. “I'm making a sandwich, do you want one?”

She smiles wider and pushes off from the door frame. “Yeah, that'd be nice, thanks.”

-

When the snow flurries start, Bruce stares out of the window wistfully. Jane is curled on the couch under a blanket, splitting her attention between the TV and Bruce's back. It's been almost two months since he's been outside.

“Have you ever been skiing?” she asks.

“Yeah,” he says. “Snowboarding, too.”

She laughs a little and gets up, drawing the blanket around herself. “Really, you?”

Bruce turns and looks at her as she comes up beside him. There's a faint smile on his face. “I didn't say I was any good at it.”

She looks out of the window. It's dark out, and the snowy sky is casting a weird glow on all the grey buildings around them. She shuffles in a little closer and lets her shoulder bump against Bruce's. He shifts a little, but doesn't move away.

“Where did you go?”

“Colorado. I went there for Christmas once with... an ex.”

She glances at him but he keeps looking straight ahead, his eyes slightly narrowed. “I went skiing in France a couple of times. I wasn't much good either.”

He nods. He's probably wishing he was out there, free to go where he wants, walk further than from her bathroom to her kitchen. Without thinking, she puts her arm around him, draping it loosely across his back. He goes still, moving only his eyes to glance at her. She offers him a quick smile and he sucks his lips into his mouth and looks back out the window

-

In early November, her birthday rolls around. Darcy sends her a few emails from wherever she's backpacking in now, and the day before her birthday, a package arrives from London. She takes it out of her mailbox and brings it up to the apartment.

“Hi,” Bruce says, twisted around on the couch, resting his chin on the back of it. He looks sleepy, like he's just woken up.

She smiles and puts the package down on the floor to take her coat off. “Hey,” she says.

He glances down at the package. “What's in the box?” he says, then blinks and sits up a little. “I mean, uh... sorry.”

“It's a birthday present from my mom,” she says, and picks it up again.

“It's your birthday?”

“Tomorrow, it is.” She comes around and sits down on the couch. “The big three five.”

Bruce smiles slightly and Jane starts opening the package, scraping the tape off with her stubby fingernails. Her mom always goes nuts with the tape. After a minute of scrabbling, Bruce reaches out and carefully starts peeling the tape off the other side. Between them they get it open and Jane lifts the wrapped present out. It's immediately obvious that it's a book, and when she tears the paper off she finds that it's one she's never heard of. 

“There's a gift tag,” Bruce says, and hands her a torn off piece of wrapping paper with the gift tag stuck to it. It says that Mom really enjoyed the book and thinks Jane will too.

“I don't know when I'm going to get the chance to read this,” she says. “Mom's going to want to do the whole book club thing over the phone. Do you want to read it?”

“It's your birthday present,” he says.

“So, I'll read it after.” She shrugs and sets it aside. “You don't have to, I just figured if you were bored.”

“Yeah, okay. Sorry.”

She pats him on the shoulder and gets up. “You apologise too much.”

“Sorry,” he says, and actually smiles with his teeth.

“Lame joke, Bruce,” she says, and heads to the bathroom.

-

She fields a few calls and emails from family and friends (well, friend plus boyfriend, who promise they've sent her something from whichever European country they're in at the moment) at work the next day, but mostly she just keeps her head down. Tomas and Amanda don't know it's her birthday and she prefers it that way.

She leaves at seven and takes the bus back, now that it's pitch black and a little too creepy for her. When she lets herself into her apartment, she hears Bruce's footsteps on the hard floor.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hi.” 

She looks up at him and finds that he's clean shaven, save for a few scabs, looking about five years younger. “Hey, you shaved,” she says, gesturing to his face.

“Yeah, uh, it was... itchy. I used one of your razors from the drawer, I hope that's okay. I, um, cut myself up a bit, so I had to throw it out.”

She shrugs. “I don't mind, I've got a bunch. You look good. I mean, um... Yeah.”

He blinks a couple of times. “Are you gonna use the bathroom?”

“Uh. Do you need it?”

“No, I was just... wondering,” he says softly.

“Oh okay, well, I guess I will...”

“Okay,” Bruce echoes.

She nods and turns towards the bathroom. “Here I go.”

When she comes back out, Bruce is banging around in the kitchen and when she walks over, he appears at the door holding something in his hands. It's a slightly misshapen cake.

“Happy birthday,” he says.

She looks at the cake for a second. There's yellowish icing on the cake that's unevenly spread. “You made that?”

“Yeah. I couldn't buy you anything, so... I used up the last of your eggs, sorry.”

“I didn't have any icing, though,” she says.

“I made it with flour, butter, and a couple of oranges,” he says. “I looked up the recipe on the internet.”

“I don't have a cake tin...”

He smiles a little. “I made one out of aluminium.”

She wipes a bit of icing off with her finger and tastes it. “Wow, this tastes really good. No one's ever made me a cake before. Thank you.” She leans up to hug him and he fumbles to rearrange the plate in his hands to give her space to put her arms around him. It's a brief hug that he awkwardly returns with a pat on her back. She steps back and smiles up at him. He rubs at his eyebrow.

“It's the least I could do after... everything's you've done for me. I really appreciate it, you know.”

She swallows. “I know,” she says.

They eat cake and watch TV for the rest of the night. The cake is good but her stomach starts to roll after a few bites, filled with nervous butterflies. She's kept up this lie for so long now that she doesn't know how to find her way back out of it. Bruce seems a little happier, calmer, healthier; maybe she hasn't done such a bad thing here, but a lie's a lie, right?

Bruce gets up after a while and goes into the bathroom to change and do his teeth. She listens to the water run as she taps her fork against her plate; he's in there long enough that she gets up and washes their plates. When he comes back out, he's ready for bed in one of the sets of pyjamas she bought him. She stands at the kitchen door, chewing at her lip for a moment.

“You don't have to sleep on the couch,” she says quickly as he picks up the blanket.

“Where else would I...?” he murmurs, then trails off.

“The... bed,” she says. “It wasn't so bad last time, was it?”

“That was... an accident. I shouldn't have done that.”

“Well, we're adults, right? It's not like anything's... I just don't think you should have to sleep on this crappy old thing any more.”

Bruce crosses his arms over his chest, tucking his hands under his armpits. “I don't know,” he mutters.

“You don't have to,” she says, “I just want you to know that... the offer's there.”

“Thanks,” he murmurs. He seems to be hunching in on himself, looking more vulnerable than ever.

“I'm going to do my teeth,” she says, and hurries out of the room.

She goes straight to her room after the bathroom and sits on the bed, chewing at her lip. Her bedroom is sparse and bleak, and it's one of things she likes least about the apartment. It's not like the various places she's lived in in the past were so beautifully decorated, and it's not like she's paying rent, so who's she to complain, but there's something terribly lonely about this bedroom.

There's a knock at the door.

“Um,” Bruce says, and stares at her.

She takes a breath and pulls the covers back.

“I can sleep on top,” he says, but she shakes her head. He shuffles into the room and sits down on the other side of the bed. “Sometimes I talk in my sleep,” he adds.

“It's fine,” she says. “I'm going to turn the light off, okay?”

He glances at her and presses his lips together, then nods. She switches the light off.

-

It takes a few nights for Jane to stop having to coax Bruce into the bed, but even then, he's incredibly tense. He sleeps at the very edge of the bed, his back to her, so close that one morning he falls out of bed when her alarm goes off.

“Are you okay?” she asks, still half asleep herself.

“I'm fine,” he mutters.

She decides that they need to go out; she's starting worry that he might get DVT or something. She knows he's going to reject the idea, so she takes some time to plan it out first before she presents it to him.

Of course, he says 'no'.

“What if someone sees me?”

“We'll be careful. We'll wait until it's dark, I'll rent a Mobility car--”

“A what?”

She waves her hand. “It's like a Zipcar. You can go out the front of the building and I'll go out the back, since I know where the back door is, I'll park the car over on that corner--” She gestures for him to get up and look out the window where she's pointing, and he reluctantly does. “--and we'll drive somewhere we can stretch our legs.”

“I don't know...” Bruce murmurs.

“Come on, are you getting any exercise?”

“I walk around in circles sometimes,” he says, and screws up the corner of his mouth. “I guess... maybe.”

“How about tomorrow night?”

“I'll think about it,” he allows.

That's as good as yes to Jane, and she gets the car all set up for the following night, packs some flasks of hot chocolate, and harasses Bruce into wrapping up warm.

“How long are we going to be out?” he asks, pulling a coat on over his hoodie. He has a baseball cap on too, pulling down low on his eyes.

She shrugs. “I don't know, I'm just, you know, being prepared,” she says, and concentrates on packing the flasks in secure enough that they won't leak.

“Okay,” Bruce says, and when she glances up at him, he's smiling slightly.

The plan goes off without a hitch, and they get into the rental car at just after midnight. There's no one else around, either on foot or on the road, and she pulls out and starts driving.

“I guess I should have asked before,” Bruce says, “but where are we going?”

“I thought maybe we could drive over to the Palais des Nations. I mean, it's closed now, obviously, but it's nice around there. Unless there's somewhere you'd like to go?”

“No, that sounds fine,” Bruce says, and stretches his legs out into the well of the car.

There are soft flakes of snow falling to the ground, lit up by the car's headlights. It's not heavy enough or cold enough for it to settle, but it still feels nice and festive.

“Do you want the radio on?” she asks.

He shakes his head. “I like it like this.”

She nods. “Me too.”

It's a short drive, only fifteen minutes until they're past the Palais des Nations and approaching a park at the water's edge. The park is closed, but there's a long road nearby running along the water that's completely empty. She parks at one end and gathers up her bag.

“Come on,” she says.

They get out and start walking down the sidewalk. The sky is bright enough with snow that the mountains are visible across the water, and on the other side, old buildings overlook them. Bruce stares out at the mountains.

“A little bit better than being cooped up in my apartment, huh?” she says, nudging his shoulder with hers. Her words come out in a cloud of white mist.

“Yeah,” he says, and glances back to smile at her. “It reminds me of Bella Coola.”

“Bella Coola?”

“It's in British Columbia. I stayed there for a while. It was peaceful.”

“Why did you leave?”

He shrugs. “I can't seem to... stay in one place for very long, I guess. I got moved around a lot as a kid, too.” He lifts his hand to his mouth and blows on them, rubbing them together.

“Oh, you don't have gloves!” she says, flexing her own gloved hands.

“It's fine, I'll just keep them in my pockets,” he says. He stuffs his hands back into his pockets and walks for a moment before lifting them to his mouth again and smiling at her apologetically. “I got used to central heating, I guess.”

He drops his hands again and shrugs.

“Do you want my gloves?” she asks.

“What? No, no, don't worry. Anyway, there wouldn't fit me.”

“I hate to break it to you, Bruce, but you have pretty small hands.”

He lifts his hand to his face and looks at it. “I guess I do...” he murmurs.

“Yeah,” she says, and makes the split second decision to grab his hand and pull it back down between their sides. His eyebrows jump up. “I can't do anything about the other one,” she says, and shifts her gaze to the mountains.

“Oh—kay,” Bruce mutters. He moves his fingers in her grip, then tightens them just a little.

They walk further, not speaking, as she swings their arms. She can't see his face since it's covered by his hoodie, but she thinks he seems happy anyway. Happier, at least. They keep going until they pass a bench.

“Do you want to sit?” she says.

“Sure,” he murmurs.

She lets go of his hand, somewhat reluctantly, and sits down. She puts her bag down between her legs and pulls out a flask and plastic cups. “Hot chocolate?”

“Thanks,” he says.

She pours out the two cups and hands him one. He takes it and wraps his fingers around it for a minute before taking a sip. “It's good,” he murmurs and smiles.

“So, you said that... you moved around a lot as a child?” she says.

“Yeah...” He taps his fingernails against the cup. “I was in foster care for a while.”

“Oh... I'm sorry...” she mutters, and lifts her cup to her mouth to cover the moment.

“It's okay,” he says. “It wasn't so bad, I guess. I... met a lot of different kinds of people.”

“Were you...” She trails off and shakes his head. 

“I got bumped around different relatives for a while, then foster parents... I wasn't a great house guest. I went into puberty earlier than most, so then I wasn't cute any more, and I didn't get any more placements. I stayed in a group home until I got into Harvard.”

“That sounds... horrible,” she says.

He shrugs. “Believe me, it could have been a lot worse.”

She doesn't think she wants to know what constitutes 'a lot worse' to Bruce. “Well...” she murmurs.

“It's okay not to know what to say,” Bruce says, turning to her and smiling.

She laughs a little. “That is my normal mode of behaviour.”

Bruce rubs at his nose and sniffs. “You're doing fine.”

They get back to her apartment just after three in the morning. Bruce hurries in through the front and Jane comes up through the back, having left the car in its designated spot. They dress for bed in separate rooms before getting under the covers. Bruce continues to shiver, his cheek, nose, and fingertips pink with cold.

“Do you want another blanket?” she asks.

“Uh...” Bruce murmurs, and rubs at his face.

She pushes the covers back again. “I'll go grab one.”

“I can get it,” he says.

She waves him off and gets up. “It's fine, it'll just take a second.” She goes out into the hallway, gets another blanket out of the tiny linen closet and brings it in. “Here we go,” she says, and shakes it out to spread over the bed. Bruce takes one edge and smooths it out over himself.

“Thanks,” he says as she gets back into bed.

“No problem,” she says, and reaches for the lamp.

“And thanks for...” Bruce continues. She drops her hand and looks back at him. “Thanks for tonight. I really did need it.”

She smiles and forces herself to maintain eye contact with him. “Yeah, me too, it was nice. Do you want me to turn the light out?”

“Yeah,” he says, and scoots down on the mattress. He starts shifts over to roll onto his side as she turns out the light, but seems to change his mind and lies down flat on the mattress instead.

“Night,” she says softly.

-

She likes to think that he seems happier after their trip out. It seems like he smiles quicker, laughs more, sleeps longer. She likes to think so, anyway.

It's December now, and in a couple of weeks she's going back to London to spend Christmas and New Year with her mom. She has no idea what to do about Bruce while she's away; he must realise that there's a chance she won't be here over Christmas, but he doesn't mention anything.

It hasn't stopped snowing since their trip, although it never gets cold enough for it to settle long. Bruce gazes wistfully out of the windows some days, though, and her jokes about him wanting to build snowmen feels flat and uncomfortable. 

He's looking out of the window now, his thumbs tucked into his belt loops.

“What movie to you want to watch?” she asks.

He glances over his shoulder. “I don't mind, you choose.”

“Well, they're all in French, so I guess it doesn't really matter.”

Bruce looks back out the window and laughs a little. “Yeah.”

Her phone starts to ring. Her phone rarely rings, and almost never receives calls from anyone other than her mom, Darcy, and Erik, and the occasional call from Tomas and Amanda, but the number on the screen is unfamiliar.

“It's probably a cold caller,” she says, and waits for it to ring off. She brings her browser up to google the number, but the phone starts ringing again, same number. Bruce looks back at her, with a slight frown. “Maybe if I answer they'll stop calling.”

She accepts the call and lifts the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

“Dr Foster?” a man asks. His accent is American. Bruce has turned back to the window and she looks at him with a stab of anxiety.

“Speaking,” she says softly.

“Bonjour, Dr Foster, you might remember me, name's Tony.”

“T--” She cuts herself off, still staring at the back of Bruce's head. “Oh, hi. Hi.”

“Hi,” Tony echoes with a slight laugh. “So I'll cut to the chase, can we talk?”

“Um, sure...” she says. What could Tony possibly have to talk to her about?

“Are you at home right now?”

“I... am,” she says slowly.

“Great, what's your buzzer number?”

“My...” She widens her eyes and gets up, grabbing the back of Bruce's shirt. He starts as she drags him away from the window. “You're outside my building, Tony?”

Bruce whips around, his face abruptly pale, his mouth slack with surprise or horror. 

“Sure am,” Tony says, “can I come up? It won't take long.”

“Uh, um...” She locks eyes with Bruce and swallows. She can't turn him away after all this preamble. “Sure. It's buzzer number one oh five.”

The intercom rings a moment later and she buzzes him. “See you in a minute,” she says, and hangs up.

“You told him,” Bruce says flatly, his gaze distant and wary.

“Of course I didn't,” she says. “Why would I do that after all of this time?”

Bruce stares back at her with that hunted look he had weeks ago. His whole body is a tense line, ready to bolt or do something far more idiosyncratic.

“We don't have much time,” she says, and grabs his wrist. “You need to hide.”

Bruce stays rooted to the spot for a second before moving with her. She drags him into the bedroom and shoves him into the closet, pushing him into her clothes. “I tell you when you can come out.”

“Okay,” he murmurs.

She shuts the door on him and hurries back to the living room to clear away the evidence of more than one person in the apartment. She collects up a plate and cup, his sweater and a pair of jeans hanging over the back of the couch and dumps them in the kitchen, hiding them away in whatever cupboard space is available.

There's a knock at the door. She walks to answer it slowly, trying her best to slow her breathing down, hoping that her face isn't too red. There's no explainable reason for her to be so flustered answering the door. She gets there, takes a deep breath and lets it out, then opens the door.

“Hi, Mr Stark,” she says, “sorry, I was tidying up a little.”

“I'm sure I've seen worse,” Tony says. “Or, you know, done worse. And it's Tony, okay?”

“Sure,” she says, “come in.”

“Thanks,” he says and steps through the door. “Do you want me to take my shoes off?”

“It's fine,” she says, and gestures to the living room. “Do you want to sit?”

“Thanks,” Tony says, and peers in. “My, my, what a humble abode you have here.”

“Yeah, it was all Culver would pay for,” she says, and leads him in.

“No, it's good,” Tony says, “very brutalist. I like it.”

She nods, and sits down, Tony following suit. “So, what did you want to talk to me about? Is everything... okay?”

“Yeah, everything's good back on the farm. Well, Clint's farm, anyway. I'm actually here to offer you a job.”

She swallows. A job? Okay, a job, that's... not Tony coming here to drag Bruce home. “A job? Okay... what kind of job?”

“I'm working on something for the Initiative.” He pauses and laughs slightly. “Shit, listen to that, I'm secret agent man. Anyway, I'm working on a kind of... interplanetary defence system. Like Star Wars for aliens. The Reagan kind, not the Lucas kind. It's highly classified shit, so I can't say much more without you signing a non-disclosure act, but we could use an astrophysicist on the team.”

“Oh,” she says. “Um... this would be working for the government?”

Tony grimaces. “Ugh... yeah, I guess so. But like, we could still stick it to the man sometimes. Yeah.”

“I'm going to have think about that,” she says slowly.

Tony's eyebrows go up. “You're going to have to think about it?” he repeats, like the thought of it never occurred to him.

“Yeah. I mean, I've got my work at CERN, and my research, I'm not sure I really have the time.”

“Maybe I could take you out to dinner and try to convince you?” Tony says, and smiles in a way that she assumes is meant to be rakish. 

“I'm sorry,” she says, “I've got a lot of work to do tonight, I can't.”

Tony's face falls. “Oh. Well, I've been thoroughly rejected.”

“Sorry,” she repeats, and glances towards the bedroom door.

“I guess I'll just go, then. Look, here's my number and email address if you change your mind. And that comes to me personally, not many people are allowed that.”

She takes the business he offers and smiles. “I'm honoured.”

Tony tries to linger a little while longer, so unused to being told no, but eventually she gets him out the door and closes it. She watches through the peephole until he's turned the corner out of sight and she hears the elevator doors open, then goes to the bedroom and opens the closet door.

“He's gone.”

Bruce stumbles out, as white as a sheet.

“Hey, hey,” she says, and wraps her arms around his shoulders to guide him to the bed. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he murmurs, “yeah, yeah. He's gone?”

“Yes, he's gone. Could you hear us? He wasn't here about you.”

Bruce nods and drags his hands through his hair roughly. “I heard.”

She strokes his shoulder up to his neck and frowns. Tony's supposed to be his friend, isn't he? Thor used to say that they were brothers-in-arms. “Bruce... why don't you want to see Tony? He'd be able to help you with all those... warrants, wouldn't he?”

“That's not what I'm worried about,” he mutters. “I can't go back there because... she's there.”

“Widow?” she says.

He shakes his head. “The girl, the girl who... Maximoff.”

“Scarlet Witch?”

“Is that what she's calling herself now?” Bruce says thinly. He looks at Jane and pauses for a moment before taking a breath. She keeps stroking his neck. “You know that she messed with our heads, right?”

“Yeah, Thor thinks he saw a vision of the future.”

“Yeah. The rest of them remembered what they saw, but I, I Hulked out too quickly to remember. I don't know what I saw, but it's... It did something to me. She did something to me, to my head. I feel... wrong. I feel scared all the time, I feel like I'm eight years old, and even though I know I'm not, and I know I'm not back there, I can't make myself believe it.”

Jane doesn't know where 'there' is, but it sounds like something she doesn't want to ask about.

“It feels like my skin is crawling all the time.” He stares at her for a moment, and she moves her hand higher, stroking where his jaw meets his neck. He doesn't even seem to notice she's doing it, and her hand is moving almost of its own accord. “I said... I'd, that I could kill her without even turning green and I meant it and I still mean it, and that terrifies me. It terrifies me that I could feel that, and... enjoy it. That's why I need to leave, I need to distance myself from... that.”

“Okay, I can see why you'd feel that way, but what about Widow? Are you just going to leave her behind? Do you love her?”

He drops his head. “I don't know. I liked being her, I liked what I could be with her. I liked that... I could be someone else with her.”

“That's a good thing, being someone else?”

He looks back at her as if she's crazy. “Yes, that's a good thing.”

“Well, I don't know, you seem okay to me.”

He smiles a little and looks back at his lap. “I got swept up in it, the attention and the newness of it. My life has always been monotonous, even after Hulk. I've never had adventures. Being with her felt like an adventure. And I can't pretend that I wasn't flattered by someone as beautiful as her being interested in me.”

“Okay,” she murmurs, and drags fingers up to the short at the base of his head. He looks back up, studying her face, and presses his lips together. She leans in slowly, but Bruce doesn't move, just blinks a couple of times, letting his mouth open again, and lets her kiss him very softly. She kisses the corner of his mouth, his two day stubble rubbing rough against her chin.

“What are you doing?” he murmurs.

“I don't know,” she says. “Do you want me to stop?”

He blinks a few more times. “No,” he says softly.

She moves her mouth over his and kisses him again. It's an innocent kiss, closed mouth, and he returns it as if he doesn't really know how to. She slides her other hand over his cheek and keeps going, nudging him onto his side so that they're both lying down on the bed.

“I can't... have sex,” he murmurs.

“Okay... why not?”

He looks away and she feels a stab of guilt. “Because of Hulk,” he mumbles.

“Don't you Hulk out when you're angry?”

“Yeah...”

“Are you angry when you have sex? Do you not... enjoy it?”

“I enjoy it,” he says slowly. 

“So why would you Hulk out?”

He blinks at her a couple of times. “Maybe I'm just too scared.”

“Of what?”

He lifts a shoulder. “Everything.”

“Do you want to stop?”

He chews on his lip for a second before murmuring, “no.”

She nods and leans in again, kissing him. She pushes her fingers into his hair and opens her mouth. He lets her, kissing back every now and then. She lets her other hand drift down his body to his fly. It takes her a couple of minutes to work his top button and zipper free with her left hand mashed against the mattress, and when she does she finds that he's half hard.

“Condoms?” he mutters.

“Yeah,” she says, and rolls away from him to open the drawer of her night stand. The packet has sat long unloved in there, but there are still a few left. She rolls back with one held between her fingers and starts kissing him again. 

He touches her a little, trails his fingers along her arm as she works her jeans down far enough. It's not much, but it's nice.

She palms his dick through his boxers; he's mostly hard now and she tears the condom wrapper open. “Do you want to put it on?”

“Can you do it?” he says quietly.

“Sure.” She tugs his boxers down and closes her hand around his erection. He makes a soft sound and she wonders if she should just jerk him off right now, but she knows she wants more than that. It's awkward getting the condom on, not least because of the position they're in. Bruce doesn't seem to want to move much, though, and she feels like any move might scare him off.

Finally, she manages to roll it on. She looks back up at him and notices that he's breathing fast. She puts her hand on his chest and feels how fast his heart is thumping.

“Are you okay?”

“I don't know,” he mumbles. “Can't make my heart slow down.”

“It's okay,” she says. She presses her hand flat to his chest. “Nothing's going to happen.”

“What if it does?”

“It won't,” she says, and shifts close enough to line his dick up and roll her hips against his.

He groans and presses his face into his arm. It takes her a while to find a rhythm, such as it is, and Bruce keeps up a continual string of soft pants and groans, nearly under his breath. She keeps her hand on his chest and his heartbeat starts to slow down after a few minutes. She gets as close as she can, wrapping her free arm around his back. His groans get a little higher-pitched as he gets closer to orgasm, but the angle is all wrong for her and she isn't the slightest bit aroused, yet she doesn't want to stop.

“Oh God,” Bruce groans. “Oh, oh...”

She kisses his jaw as he comes, whining a little and shuddering through it. His heartbeat ratchets up again, but he doesn't seem to notice. She pulls her hand away from his chest and runs it through his hair.

“Okay?” she murmurs.

“God,” he mutters, and lifts his head.

She smiles. “How was that?”

“It was okay. Good. It was good.” His face is already pink from the exertion but she thinks it might be going pinker. “Should I...?” He gestures downwards and after a second she gets it: should he pull out? She's definitely not having an orgasm tonight so she nods, and he gently pulls out, then rolls over onto his back.

“You didn't Hulk out,” she says.

“Yeah. I think... I feel safe here.”

She smiles and reaches out smooth slightly damp hair from his face. “I'm glad. The Einstein-Rosen bridge will be done soon, I promise.”

“Yeah,” he says, and smiles.

-

It's good for a couple of days after that. They kiss a little and sit pressed together on the couch and sleep facing each other. She doesn't try to initiate sex again, because the idea of it makes her stomach shake a little. She tries not to think about why.

It's also almost the middle of December and she hasn't booked her flight to London, despite assuring her mother that she has. Instead of thinking about that, she goes out and buys tons of new food and downloads movies in English and spends a couple of hours in the kitchen making a fancy dinner for the two of them.

“Wow,” Bruce murmurs when she hands him the plate of grilled chicken. “This looks great.”

“Well, taste it first before you compliment me.”

Bruce smiles. “I'm sure it'll be great.”

It's actually a little gummy, but Bruce doesn't say anything about it. They watch a couple of the movies she downloaded, their thighs pressed together, and eat the packaged cake that she bought.

“How much-” Bruce pauses and glances at her. “How much longer do you think the bridge is going to take?”

“Oh,” she says. “Um, couple of days?”

He nods, seemingly satisfied. “Okay.”

She can't sleep that night, thinking about the deadline she's set for herself now. Is she really going to let him go in two days? 

Does she really have a choice?

-

A couple of days comes and goes and Bruce doesn't bring up the bridge again. She wonders if he's forgotten about it, and hopes he has. She takes the bus out to the bigger mall on Saturday to buy Bruce a Christmas present and some more clothes.

When her dad felt guilty about working too much, he used to give her things.

She leaves the mall leaden down with bags and gets home at five.

“Bruce?” she calls. “I got you a couple of new shirts. I think they'll fit.”

“Jane,” Bruce says, in a strange tone.

She looks into the living room and frowns. He's been pacing the floor, it looks like. “Are you okay?”

“When is the bridge going to be done?”

She forces herself not to look away and puts down her bags. “Couple of days.”

“That's what you said a week ago.” He stares at her long and hard. She swallows.

“I just ran into some problems,” she says, “I didn't say anything because... because it wasn't a big deal.”

“It's been _months_ ,” Bruce says. “Are you even working on it?”

She crosses her arms over her chest. “Of course I am, what the hell do you think I've been doing?” 

“I don't know what you've been doing, I've been shut up in here!”

“It's not like you've minded!” she shouts, waving her hand around. Her mother always says that she gets combative when she's in the wrong. “I mean, I buy you food and clothes and you sleep in my bed and do... other things, don't act like you've got it so bad!”

“You haven't been working on it,” Bruce says flatly.

“Of course I fucking worked on it!” she yells.

Bruce stares at her, unblinking. “Worked?” he says quietly. “What do you mean... worked?”

“What? What do you mean what does, what...” She stammers angrily.

“Have you finished it?”

She looks back at him.

“When did you finish it?” 

She looks at the floor. “A while ago.”

“How long?”

“A while.” She risks a glance up at him, and he looks so betrayed that she looks away again.

“Why? Why did you lie to me?”

She shrugs. “I... I, I just didn't think you should go, I thought you'd change your mind after a while.”

“You lied to me,” he says, louder.

“I just didn't want you to go! I didn't think it was safe. Is that so bad? Is it so bad that I didn't want you to go? Goddamnit!”

There's a thumping noise on the floor that they both look down at. 

“Downstairs neighbours,” she murmurs, “they like me to be quiet.”

“I should just leave,” Bruce says. “I don't know what I was thinking, what am I doing? I've been down this road too many times. It's not your fault.”

He starts to move towards her, towards the front door, but she stays where she is.

“No,” she says. “No, I'll, I can do it, okay? I'll run the bridge, you can go wherever you want, you can run as far as you want.”

“I shouldn't have asked you to do any of this,” he says. “It was too much. You're a stranger.”

A stranger... “You can go tomorrow night, I'll figure out a way to get you in. You can wait one night, can't you?”

He blinks a couple of times.

“There's nowhere else for you to go if you leave,” she says.

“Tomorrow night,” he says quietly.

“Yeah,” she mutters. She gestures to the bags on the floor. “I got you some stuff.”

They barely speak for the rest of the night and he goes back to sleeping the couch. She leaves the next morning before he gets up and spends the day snapping at people and getting absolutely no work done. The security at CERN is pretty tight, she can't just bring him in with her, her access card only opens the gates long enough for one person to get through. You only need an access card to get in, though, not to get out. 

Tomas shoves his card back into his bag every morning after coming in and dumps his bag under his desk. He doesn't look at it again for the rest of the day...

She waits until he goes to the restroom in the late afternoon, walks over to his desk, surreptitiously digs around in his bag, and pulls out his pass. She pockets it and walks back to her own desk as casually as she can.

She leaves at six, taking the bus home. It's snowing quite a lot now, and bus moves slowly. Jane stares out the window and gnaws at her nails. She could put a stop to this completely, call Stark and have him take Bruce home. She could betray Bruce entirely.

She gets off at her stop and drags her feet back to her apartment. Bruce is sitting on the couch, his shoulders tight, with a bag at his feet.

“When are we going?”

“Midnight,” she says, and drops her bag with more force than necessary.

“Why?”

“Do you want to get caught?” she snaps.

He looks away and locks his fingers together. “No. Okay, midnight.”

She keeps glaring at the side of his face, then shakes her head. “I'm going to have a shower.”

She rents another car to drive them back to CERN, and crawls along the icy road. It'd just be her luck to crash the car on the way. But they make it, and she tosses Tomas's access card onto Bruce's lap and opens the car door.

“Swipe it when I tell you,” she says, and gets out of the car.

Bruce stays a half step behind her, staring down at the card. She swipes hers at the door and gestures for him to do the same.

“This card says 'Tomas Janiček',” he murmurs. “Did you steal it?”

“Well, how did you expect to get in?” she says, and leads him to the elevators. Bruce glances up at a security camera as they pass it.

“I don't know...” he says.

She directs him to swipe the card again and steps into the elevator. He follows and stuffs his hands in his pockets. 

“Are you going to get into trouble for this?”

“Probably,” she says. She's probably going to get kicked out of the lab, lose her funding, maybe have a visit from the police.

“I didn't... think about that,” he says quietly. “I'm sorry, I don't want you to get into trouble.”

She shrugs. “We're here now, so...”

He bites his lip. “I'm sorry.”

She feels herself thaw out a little, looking at his worried face, which brings along with it all that guilt. “It's okay,” she says, “it's not your fault.”

“Yes, it is,” he says, and the elevator doors open. They step out and she offers him a slight smile as she starts heading to the LHC.

“Well, I said yes, didn't I? I shouldn't have lied to you.”

“You didn't do it to be malicious,” he says. “I liked... I liked being with you, I needed it. I shouldn't have shouted yesterday. You were just... looking after me.”

“It's okay,” she says and opens the door. Bruce stops and stares up at the LHC, his mouth slightly open.

“Wow.”

She smiles a little. “You must have seen more impressive things with Stark.”

“Not really...” Bruce murmurs, looking up at it in wonder.

Jane touches his hand gently. “Come on.”

Bruce shifts his gaze to her for a second, then hooks one of his fingers around hers and lets her lead him over to the computer terminal. Finally he tears his eyes away from the LHC and looks at her.

“So, how does this work?”

She pulls a flash drive out of her pocket. “I run the program and then, in theory, we get a wormhole.”

“The program's on that?”

“Technology, huh?” she says, and plugs it in to the computer. She clicks on the program and waits for it to boot up.

“Don't we need to be outside for this?”

She shakes her head. “It isn't like Thor's beam of light, it's a...” She smiles. “Stargate.”

Bruce nods, his eyebrows scrunched thoughtfully. “What did you mean, 'in theory'?” 

“Well, I never actually tested it, because I'm not supposed to do this without permission, but I figured out where I'd been going wrong.”

“Okay... and how do you put in coordinates? I mean, how to you know the other end won't open into space?”

“Science,” Jane says. “It would take too long to explain, and honestly, you probably wouldn't quite understand. You know, if you're having second thoughts, we can leave right now.”

Bruce sucks on his lips, glances at her, then at the computer, and shakes his head. “No, I, I have to do this.”

She sighs. “All right, then let me get to work.” 

She starts typing as rapidly as she can, aware that she doesn't know the full extent of the security here and they might get caught at any moment. The LHC starts to hum, and Bruce goes back to staring up at it.

“Jesus,” he mutters, as lights begin to flash and the space between the two ends of the LHC start to spark. She types a few more lines, hits enter, and looks up as well. The sparks grow, connecting with each other until they form a ring twenty feet up that quickly begins to grow. Bruce holds his hand out, shaking slightly, and she takes it. The ring starts to contract, rapidly, and she has a briefly moment of fear that it's going to collapse before it blasts outwards again. A ripple goes through the entire room, through her and Bruce, ruffling their hair. It doesn't hurt, but it feels strange. She can taste it, it tastes metallic.

“It think it's ready,” she says.

“Uh huh,” Bruce murmurs.

She tugs on his hand and he comes. She takes him to a platform and they climb on before she starts working the controls to raise it and draw it closer to the wormhole. The _wormhole_ that she created, holy shit. She lets down one of the railings to line it up with the edge of it, the platform shuddering as it gets closer. The metallic taste is stronger up here and she can feel it on her skin. It's not hot or cold, it's something else, something she's never felt before, that probably no one has ever felt before. The wormhole is like every colour in the rainbow, like the sheen on a bubble when the light hits it; it undulates and lets off sparks, and she thinks she should really be recording this but she's too caught up in it to get her phone out.

“Well, this is it,” she says quietly.

“Okay,” he murmurs. He shoulders his bag and walks past her, coming to a stop a foot from wormhole. He lifts his hand to it and tendrils stretch out towards him, curling around his fingers. “It feels strange.”

“Yeah,” Jane murmurs. This all feels strange.

He takes another step forward and she grabs the back of his coat. He looks over his shoulder with a sad look in his eyes. “I need to go.”

She swallows. “It's... it's dangerous out there, you know.”

“So am I.”

She shakes her head. He doesn't understand what she means. How is he going to get by out there, with no money and no idea where he is, no way to communicate with others, a Terran surrounded by the strangest creatures he'll ever see. She flexes her fingers in his coat.

“I have to go,” he repeats.

She nods, and then her feet are moving, bringing her to his side. He frowns.

“I'm coming with you.”

His eyes go round. “No.”

“I wasn't asking,” she says. “It's my wormhole, do you really think I'm not going to be the first person to step through it?”

“You said it was dangerous,” Bruce murmurs.

“I know my way around better than you do.” She lets go of his coat and takes his hand. “Come on,” she says.

It's a huge leap of faith, maybe literally, if the wormhole doesn't hold and they fall twenty feet to the ground and break their legs. She doesn't even have a change of underwear, and she's pretty sure she forgot to turn off the kitchen light when they left.

She tugs on his hand and, for a moment, he doesn't move. “Wormhole's not going to stay open forever.”

He stares back at her and takes a deep breath. “Yeah.”

They walk right up to the wormhole, until the tendrils start to wrap all around them. She takes the first step, extending her foot through the wormhole. It feels strange, like it's there and it's not there at the same, like a phantom limb. Bruce squeezes his hand tighter around hers and starts to step through.

The wormhole closes behind them.

**Author's Note:**

> The title and some of the premise come from a German novel _The Invention of Curried Sausage_ , about a woman who harbours a runaway German soldier at the end of WWII and lies to him about the war ending. The rest of the premise is based around some of the early speculation that Hulk wasn't going to go into space at the end of the movie. I know nothing about the security procedures at CERN and incredibly little about the Large Hadron Collider. Very possibly a Bruce and Jane in space sequel will follow.


End file.
